Which Side of Genocide

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l

Physical Vs. Spiritual Annihilation

Purim is a time of physical celebration. It is a mitzvah to enjoy a festive
meal, to send gifts of food to friends and contributions to the needy - and even to imbibe
spirits more than one is accustomed to doing.

Chanukah, by contrast, is a time of spiritual celebration. We light candles and add Hallel
to our prayers. But there is no obligation to have a festive meal - latkes and
doughnuts are only a popular custom.

Why this difference between Purim and Chanukah?

One suggested approach is that Jews have been historically threatened by two forms of
genocide - physical and spiritual. Purim recalls the threat of Haman's "final
solution to the Jewish problem." Haman was determined to annihilate every Jew,
"young and old, children and women in one day." He would not have abandoned his
plan even if the Jews had all abandoned their faith in Hashem. Since it was the physical
body of the Jewish People which was saved from destruction, it is incumbent on the
survivors and their heirs throughout the generations to celebrate with their bodies by
eating, drinking and sharing such indulgence with others.

Chanukah celebrates heavenly rescue from a threat of spiritual genocide. The Hellenist
Greeks were interested in forcing assimilation upon the Jewish People, not physically
destroying them. Since the threat was a spiritual one, the celebration of our deliverance
is a spiritual one of lights and prayers of praise.

This very neat explanation is challenged by one of the great Halachic commentaries in
the following manner:

The Torah forbids the males of the Ammonite and Moabite nations from ever marrying a
woman from a Jewish mother, even if they convert to Judaism. Our Sages explain that the
Torah distances these nations from our midst because of their great crime in tempting our
ancestors to sin through sexual promiscuity and idol worship on their way out of Egypt.
The Edomites, on the other hand, are distanced from marrying into our people after
conversion for only two generations, despite the fact that they waged war against us and
tried to destroy us. The conclusion, say our Sages, is that one who seeks to persuade a
person to sin commits a greater crime than one who tries to kill him. Why? Because one who
kills him takes him away only from this world, while one who causes him to sin brings upon
him Divine retribution which removes him from this world and from the World to Come.

Therefore, spiritual genocide is equivalent, if not worse than, physical genocide. Why
then should we not physically celebrate our Chanukah deliverance from the
physical-spiritual genocide which threatened us?

A fascinating response to this challenge is provided by another great Halachic
authority:

When is causing a Jew to sin equivalent to physical genocide because he loses both
worlds? Only when the Jew is enticed to sin as he was by the daughters of Moab who
exploited sexual attraction to lead Jews to idol worship. That is why the Moabites were
distanced from our people in an even more severe manner than were the Edomites who only
tried to perpetrate physical genocide.

The Hellenists, on the other hand, attempted to coerce Jews into committing
sins. Submission to such pressure can certainly not be viewed as inviting Divine
retribution which is expressed in physical and spiritual genocide. But continued violation
of religious practice is certain to undermine the spiritual health of a people, and
deliverance from such pressure is a cause for celebrating a rescue from spiritual genocide
in a purely spiritual way.

Which side of genocide does our own generation face? The threat of physical genocide
which reared its ugly head in the Holocaust still echoes in the Arab call to Jihad against
the Jewish State. But this danger is nowhere near as tangible as that of the spiritual
genocide which is decimating our ranks in the form of widespread assimilation and
intermarriage.

This is not the spiritual genocide of Hellenist, Crusader or Inquisitors. Nowhere are
Jews being forced to choose between the cross and the stake, the crescent and the sword.
Our problem is that of the Moabite kind, submission to passion for pleasure exacerbated by
the powerful forces of social conformity, the age-old desire to be a nation like all
nations. This is a situation of "do-it-yourself genocide" where more than six
million are trying to achieve a final solution of vanishing into the family of nations,
rather than serve as a model for them.

On Purim, when we joyfully celebrate our miraculous escape from one side of genocide we
must resolve to strengthen our Jewish identity through Jewish education in order to save
our people from the other side of genocide.

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